Jerry Yang

Everyone should know who Jerry Yang is -- and if they don't, they should at least know his creation; that Directory to end al Directories, Yahoo!. Yes, that Jerry Yang.

Jerry was originally born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1968, but moved to San Jose at the age of 10. He was born with the name of 'Yang Chih-Yuan', but adopted the name 'Jerry' after comming to the United States.

He was a student of Stanford University when he started Jerry's Guide, the precursor to today's yahoo.com. When his venture 'took off', he decided to go on a leave of absence from Stanford University's Electrical Engineering Ph.D. program, though he still holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford. He is, of course, working at Yahoo!, where he goes by the title of Chief Yahoo. He was married in 1997 to Akiko who is now, obviously, his wife.

While he is one of the richest people in the world (ranked #32 by Forbes in 1998 at $800 million), and recently bought a $1.9 million house in Los Altos, he maintains a charity in the form of a Two-million dollar endowment at the Stanford University School of Engineering; "We hope the guy or woman who ends up taking the chair is also sort of a yahoo."